


The Weight of Love

by AnontheNullifier



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Lots of Angst, Pre and post CW, Slight diversion from CW
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-08
Updated: 2016-10-08
Packaged: 2018-08-20 04:28:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8236084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnontheNullifier/pseuds/AnontheNullifier
Summary: Wanda has always known and Vision slowly learns that love is a heavy burden.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly not sure where this came from other than 12 straight hours of grading and lots of Florence + the Machine. Seriously if you don't want angst, just turn around. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy.

At ten years old, Wanda discovered for the first time how supremely heavy the heart can feel. For days after escaping their collapsed apartment, she could barely move, telling Pietro that her heart was weighing down her every step, like a bag full of rocks had been thrown on top of her and she was not strong enough to bear the weight. He held her through the nights and days, carrying her to get food and find shelter, and slowly, with his ever present encouragement, she grew strong enough to carry her heart.

 

 

And now, Pietro is gone, and Vision (an oddity she has had no time nor interest to parse out) stands next to her bed. “Miss Maximoff, I brought you food.”

She barely glances at him before pulling the covers securely around her face wishing to be left alone. And so he leaves. During the brief, lucid periods of thought she occasionally has, she decides that he clearly doesn’t know any better as he comes by at the same time every day.

“Miss Maximoff, the team is about to watch a movie, if you would like to come.”

“Miss Maximoff,  the garden is in bloom and it is quite beautiful. I have read that fresh air is helpful in recovery.”

“Miss Maximoff, I have been reading a wonderful book if you would like to hear about it.”

“Miss Maximoff, I was wondering if you would give me an opinion on this outfit.”

“Miss Maximoff, training starts in a three days.” This, finally, rouses some response from her as she pulls the covers from her head and hesitantly attempts to sit up, only to fall onto her back with a groan. Red, gentle hands descend on her shoulders, easing her into a seated position, adjusting a pillow behind her back to hold her weight.

“Thanks.” She watches as his pupils dilate in surprise and what she thinks may be a smile touches his lips.

When he sits down on the edge of her bed, she realizes that she has committed a fatal error in speaking. This inhuman spectre comes through her wall every day and now, for better or worse, she has officially invited him to stay. “Are you able to stand?”

Suddenly she is ten years old and staring at the remains of where her happiness imploded. “No.”

“Are your muscles weak? I have read that protein can aid in strengthening.”

Wanda watches him curiously. “It is not my body that is the problem, my heart is too heavy.”

The creases on his face intensify as his brow descends and his eyes squint. “But the average female heart is only 8 ounces. Many times your tea is gone when I come back, the mug itself weighs approximately 16 ounces when full.”

It is not quite a laugh, but the jumbled screech that escapes her mouth surprises her as she feels this powerful, naive man prop her heart up just enough that she sits a bit taller. The concern on his face is still present, marring the intricate and beautiful lines along his cheeks. “It is not physically heavy.”

“Then what could make it heavy?”

“Love.”

The amount of energy it takes to hold a conversation exhausts her and so she leans back against the pillow and studies the way his eyes flick back and forth. She wonders if he is searching the internet for an answer or if there is something in that stone he is accessing. But she cannot bring herself to say anymore.  

Eventually his eyes still and his hand comes up as if he is beckoning the words from his mouth. “You are referencing your brother?”  Wanda can only manage to nod her head, a tiny surge of pride at the way this month old man pieced it together. “Would you like to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Very well.”  

“But,” she sighs, unsure why she feels the need to keep Vision in her room. “I would like to shower, only I am afraid I can’t stand.”  

To his credit, Vision is much more gentle then she would expect from a body purposely created to represent the ideal of strength. Even more to his credit is that he does not comment or bat an eye at having to help hold her up in the shower.

  


 

Over time Wanda finds that she has the strength to carry the burden of Pietro’s death, though her heart weighs more now than ever before. Vision continues to stop by and a tentative friendship grows as she slowly opens up. Late at night, when everyone else is asleep and she cannot stand the weight on her own, she will find him and allow him to cradle her as she talks.

If Pietro was still alive, she knows what he would say the day that Vision makes his first move. In retrospect, as she looks into the swirling, blue irises and feels his gentle hands cupping her face, she realizes they were always leading to this, even if she never saw it coming.

“Vision.”

“Wanda?”

“You know this means you have to carry the weight as well.”

He smiles at her, thumbs pulling away the tears (both happy and sad) from the corners of her eyes. “Then it is a very good thing I can alter my density.”  And she laughs as he draws her lips to his and in that moment she can feel his heart flutter so freely that she forgets all of the pain and the loss, instead focusing on the lightness of their joint strength.

  


 

This lightness can only last for so long, or so her life continues to suggest.

The Raft embodies the nightmares she has so long carried, it is the type of place she always assumed she would end up, bound and rigged up like a wild animal. There used to be shouts and banging from the others, demanding better treatment and escape, but for each shout and each fist thrown at a wall, she would be shocked. Now there is only silence. So when the cell door slides open and she feels a familiar mind, she glances up into blue, swirling eyes.

“Go away, you are not wanted here.”

He hesitates, one hand reaching out towards her, the other carefully tucked into the pocket of his trousers. “Wan-”

“I said go away.”

Wanda averts her gaze again, unable to handle how the sorrow in his eyes wraps around her tighter than the straight jacket she is wearing. “I think I understand now.” He pauses until she glances up at him. “My heart weighs just 10 ounces but I do not believe it.”

“Then give it back.”

He squats down low enough to be level with her gaze, the severity of his features confirms that he is capable of anger, but then his face soften.  “I believe such a thing would only make it worse. I promised to help you with this burden, if I lose you, I fear it will become unbearably heavy.”

The guard’s reaction time is just slow enough to allow her to throw herself into his arms before the pain erupts, electricity coursing through her body. Vision holds her while she convulses, his fingers slowly prying the collar from her throat before lifting her in his arms and phasing them through the walls until they are hovering over crashing waves.

“You have a plan right?”  

His fingers, which have been unbuckling the straight jacket, pause momentarily. “Honestly?”

Wanda lets fly a curse before pumping her now free arms in order to get the blood moving. A whirring sound crescendos behind her and all it takes to discern that it is a helicopter is the way Vision’s pupils take over his entire eye as he looks over her shoulder. “Great time for spontaneity, Vizh.”  The way he glances at her makes her feel as if they are back at the compound, buried in her blankets, instead of hovering above choppy waters about to die. “Don't you dare give me sass, just fly as fast as you can.”

Their escape is exhausting, Wanda has not had use of her powers in weeks and is suddenly holding back helicopters and bullets being shot at them. But eventually they make it far enough that there is no pursuit.

  


 

Slowly they establish a new life, having found a foreclosed house in a lazy suburb where no one particularly cares who their neighbor is, and for a while they carry on as if the burden they share is not immense. In fact, there are times when they are laughing or cuddling close, or when he whispers his undying love, that Wanda even imagines there is no weight.

And then one day there is a knock at the door.

Wanda sits up from the slouch she has developed while working (they have been blessed by faceless online jobs that are shady enough to not require credentials). It has become an accepted practice to never answer the door and so she goes back to work, assuming it will go away.  

There is another knock and the person outside pushes the doorbell. Vision appears through the wall and stares at her. “Should I answer?”

“No. They’ll go away eventually.”

But whoever is outside continues to knock, eventually moving to tap on the windows. When they see the crimson curls cascading around Natasha’s face, both of them feel a small, downward pull on their chests. Vision approaches the door, his gait slowed down a fraction of a second. “Come in, Natasha.”

Wanda rises from her seat and moves to Vision’s side, fingers interlocked with his. “What do you want?”

“Hello to you as well.” Natasha drops down onto their couch, waving her hands in a fashion that invites them to take a seat. Once they have sat down she leans forward, elbows resting on her knees. “I’ve been watching you for a while, and I am sorry to crash your little suburban fantasy, but we have some big trouble coming our way.”

Vision tenses at Wanda’s side, his usual calmness is slowly eroding the longer they stay hidden. “What sort of trouble?”

“A being named Thanos has been collecting the infinity stones.” Wanda notes how uncharacteristically on edge Natasha is, her shoulders dropping and face frightened as she says the next words, “We just learned that he is coming for the Mindstone.”

The breathing to her side stops, and when Wanda looks up at Vision she is terrified by the panic in his eyes. “No. You are wrong.”

“I’m not, and we are stronger together. We can help protect you.”  

Wanda opens her mouth to argue back but stops when she feels Vision’s hand on her knee. “We will go with you, if it is the only hope.”  

  
  


 

They are all gathered in an underground bunker, bruised, bloodied, broken bones and sprained muscles affecting almost all of them. Tony glances around at the room, his suit short circuiting enough to cause random arm spasms. “So what do we do now?”

Steve, shield broken in two, shrugs and no one else is willing to comment, too tired to think of a new plan. When the silence is finally broken, Wanda flinches. “I am the only one who has not fought.” Vision does not lift his head when he speaks, instead talking to the ground.

“No, that’s not happening.” Wanda grips his fidgeting hands, red enveloping their fingers as she channels her feelings into his mind. But she is met with a dense wall radiating from his heart.

“It is the only possibility left.”

She imploring looks around at everyone else. “Aren’t you going to say no?!”

“He’s not wrong.” Tony has always been a traitor and so Wanda ignores his input. But then Sam exhales loudly, clearly uncomfortable agreeing with Tony, even after the current reunification of the Avengers. “It could be our only shot.”

A thud above them shakes the walls of the bunker, dirt and rocks raining down in clumps large enough to leave bruises. The faces around her begin to blur as Wanda’s lachrymose glands churn out tear after tear. Gentle fingers wipe away the tears and she meets his blue irises, turning slower than they have ever before. She grabs his face and kisses him, lungs burning from reduced oxygen and physical exertion, but she does not care and continues until he breaks away from her. A soft smile, just as small as the first one he ever gave her, moves across his mouth as he pushes her hair from her eyes. “If anything happens, remember that you can adjust its density.”

Wanda ignores the confused stares, making a decision that could potentially doom them all or save the one life she still cares about. “Come on everyone, we’re going with him.”

 

It is tough, already battered and bruised they fight sloppy and haphazardly and it works, for a time. But when Thanos is able to break through the wall of red she has built and grab Vision even at his most incorporeal, she can only watch in horror.  Stark lays on the ground in front of her and all she can see is a bomb waiting to go off in an apartment in Sokovia; but this time there is an explosion, a shockwave knocks her over as Vision’s too dense body drops to the earth. She runs over to him, hands moving along his face and arms, a hollow crater in his forehead where the stone once lay and no mind where it should be. When she reaches for his chest she cannot help but notice how dense it is and in that moment the burden they once shared falls upon her and she can feel the weight on her limbs, like rocks tied to her as she is thrown into a lake. Limb by limb she falls to the ground, heart so heavy she is afraid she will plummet through the earth underneath her. She knows then that this may finally kill her and so she decides to go out in a glorious ocean of red as she channels the weight of their two hearts at the mad Titan.

 

 

A hand shakes her shoulder and her eyes peel open to find Natasha. “You did good.”

“Did we win?”

The spy bites her lips and takes in the carnage surrounding them. “Not quite, but you weakened him, knocked a stone out of that stupid gauntlet.”  Wanda can feel a loosening of the weights around her limbs until Natasha continues. “Not the Mindstone. I’m sorry.”  The weights fasten back on and she can barely draw in a breath as she glances to the still body of Vision. “Can you stand?”

“How can I?”

Natasha straightens up and holds her hand out. “Because you’re alive, you’re an Avenger, and there is still a tiny chance we can get that Mindstone back and save him.”

She lays there, staring at the hand above her face, unsure how anyone could ever walk again with the lives of her parents, Pietro, and now Vision constricting her heart. The effort it takes for her to sit up leads to sweat dripping down her forehead. Wanda has never been a physically strong person and she has little hope that her feet will hold her, but when she reaches out and touches Vision again she remembers what he said in the bunker. Focusing inward, she mentally shifts the density of his loss just enough that she can reach up to grab Natasha’s hand, a smile forming on the woman’s face. 

And she stands.

**Author's Note:**

> If you made it here, I hope you enjoyed the story. I am about halfway through writing a sickeningly fluffy Scarlet Vision fic, so I will even out the universe with that one.


End file.
